Kolej Sultan Abdul Hamid Alor Star, Kedah

Title: The Latest Open Source Software Available And The Latest Development In ICT

Name Of Candidate IC No

Mohammad Firdaus Bin Ahmad 930103-02-5851

1. Introduction
Open source software (OSS) is defined as computer software for which the source code and certain other rights normally reserved for copyright holders are provided under a software license that meets the Open Source Definition or that is in the public domain. This permits users to use, change, and improve the software, and to redistribute it in modified or unmodified forms. It is very often developed in a public, collaborative manner. Open source software is the most prominent example of open source development and often compared to user-generated content The term open source software originated as part of a marketing campaign for free software. A report by Standish Group states that adoption of open source software models has resulted in savings of about $60 billion per year to consumers Open source hardware refers to computer and electronic hardware that is designed in the same fashion as free and open source software (FOSS). Open source hardware is part of the open source culture that takes the open source ideas to fields other than software. The term has primarily been used to reflect the free release of information about the hardware design, such as schematics, bill of materials and PCB layout data, often with the use of FOSS to drive the hardware. With the rise of reconfigurable programmable logic devices, the sharing of logic designs is also a form of open source hardware. Instead of sharing the schematics, hardware description language (HDL) code is shared. HDL descriptions are commonly used to set up system-on-achip systems either in field-programmable gate arrays or directly in application-specific integrated circuit designs. HDL modules, when distributed, are called semiconductor intellectual property cores

2. The Latest Open Source Operating System (OS) 2.1 Meaning of Open Source
Open source is an approach to the design, development, and distribution of software, offering practical accessibility to a software's source code. Some consider open source as one of various possible design approaches, while others consider it a critical strategic element of their operations. Before open source became widely adopted, developers and producers used a variety of phrases to describe the concept; the term open source gained popularity with the rise of the Internet, which provided access to diverse production models, communication paths, and interactive communities.Software development costs in organizations have been touted as being approximately 15% of total costs. This indicates that the value of one over another development methodology is more of a marketing decision (which customers and pricing models) as much as it is about the design of software.

2.2 Example of Open Source OS Cross platform
-Linux is a generic term referring to Unix-like computer operating systems based on the Linux kernel. Their development is one of the most prominent examples of free and open source software collaboration; typically all the underlying source code can be used, freely modified, and redistributed by anyone under the terms of the GNU GPL and other free licenses. Linux is predominantly known for its use in servers, although it is installed on a wide variety of computer hardware, ranging from embedded devices and mobile phones to supercomputers Linux distributions, installed on both desktop and laptop computers, have become increasingly commonplace in recent years, owing largely to the popular Ubuntu distribution and to the emergence of netbooks. The name "Linux´ comes from the Linux kernel, originally written in 1991 by Linus Torvalds. The rest of the system usually comprises components such as the Apache HTTP Server, the X Window System, the K Desktop Environment, and utilities and libraries bfrom the GNU operating system (announced in 1983 by Richard Stallman). Commonly-used applications with desktop Linux systems include the Mozilla Firefox web-browser and the OpenOffice.org office application suite. The GNU contribution is the basis for the Free Software Foundation's preferred name GNU/Linux -Unix (officially trademarked as UNIX, sometimes also written as UNIX with small caps) is a computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna. Today's Unix systems are split into various branches, developed over time by AT&T as well as various commercial vendors and non-profit organizations. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, the influence of Unix in academic circles led to largescale adoption of Unix (particularly of the BSD variant, originating from the University of California, Berkeley) by commercial startups, the most notable of which are Solaris, HP-UX and AIX. Today, in addition to certified Unix systems such as those already mentioned, Unix-like operating systems such as Linux and BSD are commonly encountered. Sometimes, "traditional Unix" may be used to describe a Unix or an operating system that has the characteristics of either Version 7 Unix or UNIX System V.

3. T

L

Open Source Application Software

3.1 Meaning of Open Source Application Software
Open source application software i appli ati soft are t at is developed and maintained by t e open source community, rat er t an a soft are company. It also defined as computer soft are for which the source code and certain other ri hts normally reserved for copyri ht holders are provided under a software license that meets the Open Source Definition or that is in the public domain. This permits users to use, change, and improve the software, and to redistribute it in modified or unmodified forms. It is very often developed in a public , collaborative manner. Open source software is the most prominent example of open source development and often compared to user-generated content.

3.2 E ample of Open Source Application Software

BitComet (originally named SimpleBT client from versions 0.11 to 0.37) is a cross-protocol BitTorrent, HTTP and FTP client written in C++ for Microsoft Windows and available in 52 different languages. Its first public release was version 0.28 The current BitComet logo has . been used since version 0.50. The BitComet program is a multi-threaded multi-protocol hybrid download manager and BitTorrent Peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing application. It supports simultaneous download tasks. To complete a particular download, it can draw parts of files from m sources across any different P2P and Client-server protocols. BitComet s chief features include an embedded Internet Explorer window for the purpose of allowing users to search for torrents within the program. Along with the features typical of contemporary BitTorrent clients, it supports UPnP gateway configuration, bandwidth scheduling, Webseeding, selecting downloads inside a torrent package, and NAT traversal. When downloading, BitComet prioriti es the first and last portions of media files so that files may be previewed before they are completely downloaded. BitComet also allows users to share their torrent files on a searchable P2P network. BitComet uses the Kademlia (mainline) DHT to operate even when the tracker is offline. BitComet is capable of down loading files over HTTP and FTP as well as bittorrent, and it includes download plugins for Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Maxthon. An optional plugin is available to connect to the eD2K network. The plugin is a modified version of the GPL eMule program. When installed, it connects automatically to a server.The software includes an application to play Flash Video files (.flv and .swf files).[

Mozilla Firefox -is a free and open source web browser descended from the Mozilla Application Suite and managed by Mozilla Corporation. Firefox had 22.51% of the recorded usage share of web browsers as of May 2009, making it the second most popular browser in terms of current use worldwide, after Internet Explorer.To display web pages, Firefox uses the Gecko layout engine, which implements most current web standards. in addition to a few features which are intended to anticipate likely additions to the standards. Firefox features include tabbed browsing, a spell checker, incremental find, live bookmarking, a download manager, and an integrated search system that uses the user's desired search engine (Google by default in most localizations). Functions can be added through add-ons, created by third-party developers, of which there is a wide selection, a feature that has attracted many of Firefox's users. Firefox runs on various versions of Linux, Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, and many other Unix-like operating systems. Its current stable release is version 3.5, released on June 30, 2009. Firefox's source code is free software, released under a tri-license GNU GPL/GNU LGPL/MPL. Official versions are distributed under the terms of a proprietary EUL

4. The Latest Development in ICT

4.1 Hardware Latest Version Graphics Card: ATI Radeon X800
The Radeon X800 series is a set of GPUs currently scheduled for future release, developed by AMD graphics products division. The existence was spotted on a presentation slide from AMD Technology Analyst Day July 2007 as "R8xx". The Radeon X800 graphics technology, award-winning 3D performance, with up to 16 pipelines, higher clock speeds and breakthrough image enchancement technology, Radeon X800 Graphics Technology introduced a whole new gaming category called High-Definition Gaming

Ground-Breaking Speed
Radeon X800 Graphics Technology Delivers frame rates that surpass all previous graphics processors and up to two times the performance of the acclaimed Radeon 9800 PRO. Radeon X800 graphics technology provides an extremely smooth, responsive HD gaming experience, putting capable gamers in complete control of even the most demanding game titles. A new Architecture based on the latest .13 micron, low-k manufacturing process with ultra fast and efficient GDDR3 memory combine to produce extreme data rates and unbelievable acceleration in a quite, cool, single-shot solution.

Previous Version Graphics Card: ATI Radeon R700
The Radeon R700 is the engineering codename for a Graphics Processing Unit series released by AMD Graphics Product Group, sold under the ATI brand. The foundation chip, codenamed RV770, was announced and demonstrated on June 16, 2008 as part of the FireStream 9250 and Cinema 2.0 Media launches, with official release of the HD4800 series on June 25, 2008. Further products including enthusiast-class RV790, mainstream product RV730, RV740 and entry-level RV710 products were released throughout 2008 and the first quarter of 2009.

Execution units
The RV770 extends the R600's unified shader architecture by increasing the stream processing unit count to 800 units (up from 320 units in the R600), which are grouped into 10 SIMD cores composed of 16 shader cores containing 4 FP MADD/DP ALUs and 1 MADD/shift/transcendental ALU. The RV770 retains the R600's 4 Quad ROP cluster count, however they are faster and now have dedicated hardware based AA resolve in addition to the shader based resolve of the the R600 architecture. The RV770 also has 10 texture units each of which can handle 4 addresses, 16 FP32 samples, and 4 FP32 filtering functions per clock cycle.

Memory and internal buses
RV770 features a 256-bit memory controller and is the first GPU to support GDDR5 memory, which runs at 900 MHz giving an effective speed of 3600 MHz and memory bandwidth of up to 115 GB/s. The internal ring bus from the R520 and R600 has been replaced by the combination of a crossbar and an internal hub

was a version of Mozilla Firefox, a web browser released on October 24th 2006 by the Mozilla Corporation. Firefox 2 uses version 1.8 of the Gecko layout engine for displaying web pages. The release contained many new features not found in Firefox 1.5, including improved support for Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) and JavaScript 1.7, as well as user interface changes. On March 22, 2006, the first alpha version of Firefox 2 (Bon Echo Alpha 1) was released. It featured Gecko 1.8.1 for the first time. Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.x is the final version supported on Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 98. Mac OS X 10.5 support was added October 18, 2007 with version 2.0.0.8 . Firefox 2.0 featured updates to tabbed browsing environment, the extensions manager, the GUI, and the find, search and software update engines; a new session restore feature; inline spell checking; and an anti-phishing feature which was implemented by Google as an extension, and later merged into the program itself.

Overview
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Links default to open in new tab. Close button on every tab. Inline spell checking for text boxes. Session restoration after a browser crash. Search suggestion for Google and Yahoo!. New search plugin manager and add-on manager. Web feed previewing. Bookmark microsummaries. Updates to the extension system. Support for Sherlock and OpenSearch. Support for SVG text using svg:textPath. Anti-phishing protection. Search suggestions appear with search history in the search box for Google and Yahoo!. Support for client-side session and persistent storage. Improved feed support. A new NSIS-based installer. JavaScript 1.7. Enhanced security and localization support for extensions. New Winstripe theme refresh: o New navigation icons o URL bar refresh (New Go button attached to the URL bar) o Search bar refresh Tab bar refresh

Previous Version Web Browser : Mozilla Firefox 3.0
Mozilla Firefox 3 is a version of Mozilla Firefox, a web browser released on June 17, 2008 by the Mozilla Corporation. Firefox 3 uses version 1.9 of the Gecko layout engine for displaying web pages. The new version fixes many bugs, improves standard compliance, and implements new web APIs compared to Firefox 2.0. Other new features include a redesigned download manager, a new "Places" system for storing bookmarks and history, and separate themes for different operating systems. Firefox 3 had 5.67% of the recorded usage share of web browsers by July 2008, and had over 8 million unique downloads the day it was released, setting a Guinness World Record. Current estimates of Firefox 3's global market share are generally in the range of 20-30%. It was codenamed Gran Paradiso during its development, which included 8 alphas, 5 betas, and 3 release candidates released over 2007 and early 2008. Development continued with a planned 3.1 version codenamed Shiretoko during the summer of 2008.

5. Pervasive Computing 5.1 Meaning of Persavive Computing

Persavive computing is the technology that is gracefully intergrated in our everyday life. Pervasive computing is the trend towards increasingly ubiquitous (another name for the movement is ubiquitous computing), connected computing devices in the environment, a trend being brought about by a convergence of advanced electronic and particularly, wireless technologies and the Internet. Pervasive computing devices are not personal computers as we tend to think of them, but very tiny even invisible devices, either mobile or embedded in almost any type of object imaginable, including cars, tools, appliances, clothing and various consumer goods all communicating through increasingly interconnected networks.

5.2 Example of Pervavise Computing
Ambient Devices produced an "orb", a "dashboard", and a "weather beacon": these decorative devices receive data from a wireless network and report current events, such as stock prices and the weather. "Dangling String," installed at Xerox PARC This was a piece of string attached to a stepper motor and controlled by a LAN connection; network activity caused the string to twitch, yielding a peripherally noticeable indication of traffic.

Conclusion
The open source model of operation and decision making allows concurrent input of different agendas, approaches and priorities, and differs from the more closed, centralized models of development. The principles and practices are commonly applied to the peer production development of source code for software that is made available for public collaboration. The result of this peer-based collaboration is usually released as open-source software, however open source methods are increasingly being applied in other fields of endeavor, such as biotechnology.